A sociological/semi-feminist rant
I got lost in click-surfing the other day. I ended up watching a series of videos on the BuzzfeedYellow channel on YouTube. One of them is a video entitled 11 Things Guys Take For Granted. I wanted to respond to each of them in turn.
1: Walking right out the door VS this craziness.
'Walking right out the door' is displayed as a caption over a guy looking in the mirror for a moment and running his hands over his face. This is then replaced by stop-motion footage of a woman applying make-up, with the caption 'vs this craziness.' In other words, guys don't have to go through the hassle of putting on make-up, but women do.
Except that they totally don't.
Ever since humans started living in agricultural societies instead of foraging societies, ownership has been a thing. Before that, nobody owned anything. But once ownership existed, it became important for men to insure that their possessions were passed on to their genetic offspring. The only way to guarantee that their children aren't really someone else's was to ensure their sexual partners had no opportunity to have sex with other men. This led to a system in which women became, to a great extent, a form of property themselves.
In this social environment, women had to adapt to ensure that they weren't excluded from society altogether. If they didn't have a husband, they weren't allowed to procure food or shelter of their own. Thus, survival meant allowing oneself to become property. In fact, it meant that becoming property was desirable; in this manner, beauty became a sort of advertisement. 'Marry me,' is the implied message of the beautiful woman, 'so that I will have food and a place to sleep.' Whereas before, when sex was a social contract of acceptance within a tribe (I will have sex with you to show that you are part of my clan, and I will share all the resources of the clan with you, and to increase the emotional bond between us so that we will each look out for the other's best interest), it was beneficial for everyone to have sex with everyone, beauty notwithstanding. But when sex became a commercial transaction (I will have sex with you in the hopes of providing you offspring so that you will have a reason to give me food and shelter), men no longer had a reason to sleep with women that they didn't find beautiful.
This, along with millennia of social development, has led to the idea that women must work to make themselves more attractive, whilst men need not concern themselves with such trifles. Don't get me wrong; women find men attractive or unattractive too, and men do feel some pressure to make themselves more attractive (usually by becoming more 'athletic'), but even in today's society, men often select romantic partners based on physical appearance, whilst that is normally a less common factor (and a less important one) in women's estimation of potential husbands.
There are movements to abandon this mode of thinking. There are many social efforts to call out the way that women are portrayed in media (useful only for their beauty or ability to provide for a man's desires), pointing out the inequality in such attitudes. And this is one area in which such attitudes do desperately need to change.
For starters, women need to be seen as people, with value beyond their appearance. Then, we need to acknowledge that make-up (and many aspects of the 'ideal' beauty) are cultural. They are learned behaviours. Americans are taught (unconsciously) that women with blue eyelids are attractive, but women whose eyelids are the same colour as the rest of their skin are not. But go to any number of other cultures, and you will find such ideas ridiculed. By contrast, there are many things that Americans find unattractive but are highly valued by others. One extreme example is the neck rings worn by (amongst others) the Kayan women in Myanmar. Americans look at such adornment as unappealing, but in that culture, such an appearance is considered ideal. This is an example of how beauty is not an inherent trait.
Therefore, this becomes an issue of social acceptance. Women who do not wear make-up are often shunned, as part of the inherent social policing which assures that cultural norms are followed. But it is becoming easier than ever to be a misfit; there are plenty of sub-cultures and sub-sub-cultures and cliques and groups and other assortments of people who take pride in not fitting in. In fact, it was just this last year, in 2013, that the Collins on-line dictionary named the word geek as their word of the year, because they added a definition to that word which acknowledged that the word is losing its negative connotation. Although the second definition (a boring and unattractive social misfit) still remains, the fact that it now has a positive definition listed first (a person who is knowledgeable and enthusiastic about a specific subject) demonstrates that it is possible to take pride in one's social rebellion, and through that pride, make it acceptable.
So, in a nutshell: women don't have to wear make-up. In fact, I kind of wish they wouldn't. Not only are many (if not most) women just as attractive without it (sometimes even more so!) but it's an unnecessary superficial vanity that wastes time and money, and (perhaps more importantly) helps to reinforce the outdated and injust patriarchal structure of modern society.
Wow. That entry ended up being very long. I'm sorry. I'll try to make the rest of them much shorter.
2: Pockets VS carrying a bag.
Women carry handbags. They have to; they have so much more stuff than men do.
Nonsense. Men need just as much crap as women do. I, as a male, have often lamented the fact that I'm not allowed to carry a handbag. For a while, I had a courier bag that I would take with me so I could have all the stuff I needed. I called it my 'man purse.' I got so bad at forgetting to take it with me, I've just sort of given up. I now carry a minimum of stuff with me wherever I go. A wallet, my keys, my chapstick, a travel tube of paracetamol, a watch attached to a belt-loop via a carabiner fob, and my mobile phone attached to my belt. And even then, I often wish I had some paper for taking notes or some other trinket that would be nice to have. Whereas women often carry a lot of useless stuff in their handbags (note here that I am categorising make-up as 'useless stuff,' for reasons which I hope have been made clear in entry number 1). Perhaps the solution here is to compromise: women need less crap in their bags, but men should start carrying bags too.
3: Beards VS this horror.
'This horror' is facial waxing. And while we again get into the topic of artificial standards of beauty, I'd just like to point out that I, personally, don't mind a little bit of hair on a woman's lip. For that matter, we seem to think that hair is acceptable only on three places on a woman's body: the head, the eyelashes, and the eyebrows. All other hair must be removed (this topic will be revisited in a later entry on this list). But to be fair, it's not limited to women. Men must either keep their beards groomed, or have none. And yes, there are women who have a genetic predisposition to have more hair than 'normal,' just as some men (myself included) don't have full beards and must therefore either shave continually or look like they have mange. But that's a rant for another time.
The point: don't wax. You look fine the way you are.
4: Have a low maintenance haircut VS a nest on your head.
This entry is followed by the caption 'Not everyone can pull off short hair.' And you know what? I agree. In fact, I'd go one further. I'd say that no one can pull off short hair. I have yet to see a human, male or female (or anything in between) who looks better with short hair. The only exceptions to this are those suffering hair loss, where having the rest of one's hair long only serves as a jarring dichotomy. It goes back again to artificial standards of beauty and social acceptance. But again, my solution is to let nature run its course. Stop letting men have short hair.
5: Everyone being OK with your leg hair VS pretending you were born without it.
This goes back to entry 3: beards. This is another result of the patriarchal dictate that women have to achieve an artificial standard of beauty. Maybe it's time to recondition ourselves, as a culture, to finding women's leg hair attractive.
6: Peeing wherever you want VS squatting.
This is a biological and physical difference. Sure, maybe it's unfair that guys can pee standing up (although even that's not entirely true). But isn't it also unfair that guy's most sensitive anatomy is so tragically vulnerable to injury? Women's bits are all safely tucked away, but men's bits are just hanging out there in 'an incredible design flaw' (as Dave Barry puts it).
7: Your walk of shame isn't really shameful VS so obvious.
The only reason it's obvious is because women 'have to' dress a certain way to be seen as desirable, whereas men can dress any old way and still be wanted. If we discarded the (now mentioned multiple times in this post) artificial standards of beauty, then a woman's 'walk of shame' wouldn't be obvious.
Add to that the fact that there should be nothing shameful about people (male, female, or otherwise) having sex when they want to, with whomsoever they want to, and it wouldn't be an issue regardless of dress.
8: Have kids without giving birth VS omg wut.
The 'OMG WUT' caption is over a computer generated animated simulation of the childbirth process. It is another biological physical issue. But if we're looking at it from the perspective of wanting to be a parent (and there are other viewpoints to be had), a woman can be seen as largely independent. All they need is a single sperm (and it doesn't even have to be personally delivered) and they've got everything they need. A man is completely dependent on another for this. He not only needs an egg, but a woman to carry the fertilised egg for nine months. Even after the child is born, the woman is capable of feeding the child without having to purchase food, at least for a year or so (sometimes longer, depending on cultural norms). Men have to shell out cash for this.
Not to mention that a male has to work to form a close emotional bond with an infant. A woman has this bond inherent from the moment of birth. So there are tradeoffs.
9: Comfortable dress shoes VS stilts.
Artificial standards of beauty again. I think I've said enough on that topic.
10: stairs are no problem VS unexpected boob pain.
More physical biological issues. Women can't catch their penises in their zippers. All these physical issues are balanced by tradeoffs.
11: Being considered sexy without taking your clothes off VS we're looking at you media.
This is a legitimate problem. But it's not an inherent one. It goes back to the way that men and women are viewed in society at large (see above, where I said that women are 'useful only for their beauty or ability to provide for a man's desires'). As such, men are seen as attractive because of their ability to provide for their partner (food and shelter), which leads to their markers of wealth and status (i.e., clothes) as their 'primary fitness indicator' (their main measure of attractiveness). By contrast, women are seen as attractive because of their ability to be sexual receptacles (both for gratification of their partners and their ability to provide offspring). Therefore, their 'primary fitness indicator' is their bodies themselves, and any clothing that doesn't specifically enhance those characteristics is serving only to hide away that attractiveness.
But again, it all comes back to social acceptance. If we make a concerted effort to change the way that men and women are perceived in society, the issue of attractiveness with or without clothing will change. And either way it changes will be a good thing.
Anyway. That was just kind of bothering me, and I had to rant about it.
1: Walking right out the door VS this craziness.
'Walking right out the door' is displayed as a caption over a guy looking in the mirror for a moment and running his hands over his face. This is then replaced by stop-motion footage of a woman applying make-up, with the caption 'vs this craziness.' In other words, guys don't have to go through the hassle of putting on make-up, but women do.
Except that they totally don't.
Ever since humans started living in agricultural societies instead of foraging societies, ownership has been a thing. Before that, nobody owned anything. But once ownership existed, it became important for men to insure that their possessions were passed on to their genetic offspring. The only way to guarantee that their children aren't really someone else's was to ensure their sexual partners had no opportunity to have sex with other men. This led to a system in which women became, to a great extent, a form of property themselves.
In this social environment, women had to adapt to ensure that they weren't excluded from society altogether. If they didn't have a husband, they weren't allowed to procure food or shelter of their own. Thus, survival meant allowing oneself to become property. In fact, it meant that becoming property was desirable; in this manner, beauty became a sort of advertisement. 'Marry me,' is the implied message of the beautiful woman, 'so that I will have food and a place to sleep.' Whereas before, when sex was a social contract of acceptance within a tribe (I will have sex with you to show that you are part of my clan, and I will share all the resources of the clan with you, and to increase the emotional bond between us so that we will each look out for the other's best interest), it was beneficial for everyone to have sex with everyone, beauty notwithstanding. But when sex became a commercial transaction (I will have sex with you in the hopes of providing you offspring so that you will have a reason to give me food and shelter), men no longer had a reason to sleep with women that they didn't find beautiful.
This, along with millennia of social development, has led to the idea that women must work to make themselves more attractive, whilst men need not concern themselves with such trifles. Don't get me wrong; women find men attractive or unattractive too, and men do feel some pressure to make themselves more attractive (usually by becoming more 'athletic'), but even in today's society, men often select romantic partners based on physical appearance, whilst that is normally a less common factor (and a less important one) in women's estimation of potential husbands.
There are movements to abandon this mode of thinking. There are many social efforts to call out the way that women are portrayed in media (useful only for their beauty or ability to provide for a man's desires), pointing out the inequality in such attitudes. And this is one area in which such attitudes do desperately need to change.
For starters, women need to be seen as people, with value beyond their appearance. Then, we need to acknowledge that make-up (and many aspects of the 'ideal' beauty) are cultural. They are learned behaviours. Americans are taught (unconsciously) that women with blue eyelids are attractive, but women whose eyelids are the same colour as the rest of their skin are not. But go to any number of other cultures, and you will find such ideas ridiculed. By contrast, there are many things that Americans find unattractive but are highly valued by others. One extreme example is the neck rings worn by (amongst others) the Kayan women in Myanmar. Americans look at such adornment as unappealing, but in that culture, such an appearance is considered ideal. This is an example of how beauty is not an inherent trait.
Therefore, this becomes an issue of social acceptance. Women who do not wear make-up are often shunned, as part of the inherent social policing which assures that cultural norms are followed. But it is becoming easier than ever to be a misfit; there are plenty of sub-cultures and sub-sub-cultures and cliques and groups and other assortments of people who take pride in not fitting in. In fact, it was just this last year, in 2013, that the Collins on-line dictionary named the word geek as their word of the year, because they added a definition to that word which acknowledged that the word is losing its negative connotation. Although the second definition (a boring and unattractive social misfit) still remains, the fact that it now has a positive definition listed first (a person who is knowledgeable and enthusiastic about a specific subject) demonstrates that it is possible to take pride in one's social rebellion, and through that pride, make it acceptable.
So, in a nutshell: women don't have to wear make-up. In fact, I kind of wish they wouldn't. Not only are many (if not most) women just as attractive without it (sometimes even more so!) but it's an unnecessary superficial vanity that wastes time and money, and (perhaps more importantly) helps to reinforce the outdated and injust patriarchal structure of modern society.
Wow. That entry ended up being very long. I'm sorry. I'll try to make the rest of them much shorter.
2: Pockets VS carrying a bag.
Women carry handbags. They have to; they have so much more stuff than men do.
Nonsense. Men need just as much crap as women do. I, as a male, have often lamented the fact that I'm not allowed to carry a handbag. For a while, I had a courier bag that I would take with me so I could have all the stuff I needed. I called it my 'man purse.' I got so bad at forgetting to take it with me, I've just sort of given up. I now carry a minimum of stuff with me wherever I go. A wallet, my keys, my chapstick, a travel tube of paracetamol, a watch attached to a belt-loop via a carabiner fob, and my mobile phone attached to my belt. And even then, I often wish I had some paper for taking notes or some other trinket that would be nice to have. Whereas women often carry a lot of useless stuff in their handbags (note here that I am categorising make-up as 'useless stuff,' for reasons which I hope have been made clear in entry number 1). Perhaps the solution here is to compromise: women need less crap in their bags, but men should start carrying bags too.
3: Beards VS this horror.
'This horror' is facial waxing. And while we again get into the topic of artificial standards of beauty, I'd just like to point out that I, personally, don't mind a little bit of hair on a woman's lip. For that matter, we seem to think that hair is acceptable only on three places on a woman's body: the head, the eyelashes, and the eyebrows. All other hair must be removed (this topic will be revisited in a later entry on this list). But to be fair, it's not limited to women. Men must either keep their beards groomed, or have none. And yes, there are women who have a genetic predisposition to have more hair than 'normal,' just as some men (myself included) don't have full beards and must therefore either shave continually or look like they have mange. But that's a rant for another time.
The point: don't wax. You look fine the way you are.
4: Have a low maintenance haircut VS a nest on your head.
This entry is followed by the caption 'Not everyone can pull off short hair.' And you know what? I agree. In fact, I'd go one further. I'd say that no one can pull off short hair. I have yet to see a human, male or female (or anything in between) who looks better with short hair. The only exceptions to this are those suffering hair loss, where having the rest of one's hair long only serves as a jarring dichotomy. It goes back again to artificial standards of beauty and social acceptance. But again, my solution is to let nature run its course. Stop letting men have short hair.
5: Everyone being OK with your leg hair VS pretending you were born without it.
This goes back to entry 3: beards. This is another result of the patriarchal dictate that women have to achieve an artificial standard of beauty. Maybe it's time to recondition ourselves, as a culture, to finding women's leg hair attractive.
6: Peeing wherever you want VS squatting.
This is a biological and physical difference. Sure, maybe it's unfair that guys can pee standing up (although even that's not entirely true). But isn't it also unfair that guy's most sensitive anatomy is so tragically vulnerable to injury? Women's bits are all safely tucked away, but men's bits are just hanging out there in 'an incredible design flaw' (as Dave Barry puts it).
7: Your walk of shame isn't really shameful VS so obvious.
The only reason it's obvious is because women 'have to' dress a certain way to be seen as desirable, whereas men can dress any old way and still be wanted. If we discarded the (now mentioned multiple times in this post) artificial standards of beauty, then a woman's 'walk of shame' wouldn't be obvious.
Add to that the fact that there should be nothing shameful about people (male, female, or otherwise) having sex when they want to, with whomsoever they want to, and it wouldn't be an issue regardless of dress.
8: Have kids without giving birth VS omg wut.
The 'OMG WUT' caption is over a computer generated animated simulation of the childbirth process. It is another biological physical issue. But if we're looking at it from the perspective of wanting to be a parent (and there are other viewpoints to be had), a woman can be seen as largely independent. All they need is a single sperm (and it doesn't even have to be personally delivered) and they've got everything they need. A man is completely dependent on another for this. He not only needs an egg, but a woman to carry the fertilised egg for nine months. Even after the child is born, the woman is capable of feeding the child without having to purchase food, at least for a year or so (sometimes longer, depending on cultural norms). Men have to shell out cash for this.
Not to mention that a male has to work to form a close emotional bond with an infant. A woman has this bond inherent from the moment of birth. So there are tradeoffs.
9: Comfortable dress shoes VS stilts.
Artificial standards of beauty again. I think I've said enough on that topic.
10: stairs are no problem VS unexpected boob pain.
More physical biological issues. Women can't catch their penises in their zippers. All these physical issues are balanced by tradeoffs.
11: Being considered sexy without taking your clothes off VS we're looking at you media.
This is a legitimate problem. But it's not an inherent one. It goes back to the way that men and women are viewed in society at large (see above, where I said that women are 'useful only for their beauty or ability to provide for a man's desires'). As such, men are seen as attractive because of their ability to provide for their partner (food and shelter), which leads to their markers of wealth and status (i.e., clothes) as their 'primary fitness indicator' (their main measure of attractiveness). By contrast, women are seen as attractive because of their ability to be sexual receptacles (both for gratification of their partners and their ability to provide offspring). Therefore, their 'primary fitness indicator' is their bodies themselves, and any clothing that doesn't specifically enhance those characteristics is serving only to hide away that attractiveness.
But again, it all comes back to social acceptance. If we make a concerted effort to change the way that men and women are perceived in society, the issue of attractiveness with or without clothing will change. And either way it changes will be a good thing.
Anyway. That was just kind of bothering me, and I had to rant about it.